User talk:Moreschi/Consensus, not democracy

Thoughts? Moreschi (talk) 00:16, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Tyranny of the majority and excessive legalism

It seemed to me years ago that the people who were regular contributors, while I was an anonymous hit and run type, were stuck in a kind of late 1960s California radicalism, along with too much peace, love and vegies. That perception was/is coloured strongly by [my] own leaning towards liberalism in the British sense: not left-leaning in the American conception of the term, but tending towards a social laissez-faire attitude, yet generally conservative views on national policies affecting diplomacy, economic management and the role of the state in society generally.

Over time I have changed my mind about Wikipedia, and, hopefully, my political views have become more sophisticated and pluralist.

The problem I perceive in Wikipedia's talk pages now appears to be that some opportunists want to apply literal (fundamentalist) meanings to every guideline and rule that supports their causes, and they are quite successful for an essentially irrational bunch who should be easily opposed by simple, rational counter-argument.

Enter the consensus model, which can be suborned to the Athenian model of democracy: 'Hands up all who think we should kill Socrates. Vote carried. Let's go cut his throat.' I don't think I would ever agree to subject myself to that kind of consensus, which is why I still find JS Mill's words on the tyranny of the majority compelling as a modifier of liberal democratic aspirations. In the US you have the Constitution and the Supreme Court to handle such matters. Elsewhere it is sometimes a matter no more complex than one or two people standing up to a hostile crowd, speaking their minds and being prepared to have their throats cut for it. Of course that can't happen at Wikipedia. What does happen is that crappy articles are not deleted, odiously ideological points of view are present in some articles for months or years before discussion finally results in the common-sense thing to do, and many, many editors simply give up in the face of determined, persistent and sometimes threateningly malevolent fanaticism.

The ultimate sanction in a dispute here is arbitration, which is in itself subject to multiple interpretations of the consensus model (possibly a different one for each person involved in the arbitration process), and which risks taking an open (liberal) set of rules that sought not to prohibit stuff unless there was a need to, and turning it, over time, into a progressively more prescriptive set of rules as people seek ever greater granularity of detail and certainty. It is a precise parallel with law in democracy: look at any Western nation's tax code and it will need multiple people pushing trolleys to be moved in and out of court rooms because it has grown so huge as a result of people seeking ever greater certainty about exceptions and specifics.

That progression at Wikipedia is ominous, because it pre-sages a new 'class' of contributors who will do nothing to add content, but spend all their time making and administering rules - the way lawyers, judges and some politicians do in the world. When that happens, the present Wikipedia will have changed into a non-encyclopaedic, mechanistically legalistic project, because a new vested interest will perpetuate itself. To stop it from happening, I presently see only the same prescriptions I demand of any political party that wants my vote: do not legislate private behaviours that don't harm others (Wikipedia: don't ban socializing, talk page idiosyncracies; do not send black hats after people without good reason, and be open about those reasons when you do); be clear about the role of the state as expressing a national interest (Wikipedia: the encyclopaedic endeavour, economic management of scarce resources, freedom of information from arbitrary censorship); and don't make the state itself a vested interest in how the nation is administered through bloated bureaucracies and tenured sinecures (Wikipedia: what do people like Sue Gardner actually do?).

As an individual, or even as part of a like-minded group, is there really any other way than to act methodically on those (or some other sincerely held) views every time you encounter a page or discussion you think subverts those principles? And if so, don't rules become largely irrelevant in every specific instance of conflict, where you have start anew examining your preconceptions and to assume no one else there has ever heard all the principles you take for granted?

All these words aren't intended as a prolonged, whining complaint, or an appeal to anarchy, or even a suggestion that something's terribly wrong with Wikipedia. It is merely a reflection passed to another Wikipedia contributor who's obviously thought a bit about the same issues. There is also a question at the end of my verbiage: what do you think are the most notable trends in the self-governing dynamic of Wikipedia in your time as an active contributor? I'm not looking necessarily for clever or prescriptive stuff (though I don't rule them out if they are genuine); I'm a bit of a nerd and I like ideas for their own sake.

Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 04:28, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

• Hmm. Ok, several things here. You were fundamentally not wrong in your analysis of the active user base from several years back. There were significant problems in dealing with disruption, for three main reasons:

1. The "Californian" attitude of "cultural" (and to a lesser extent cognitive) relativism. Not be confused with genuine pluralism. A big problem on science articles ("homeopathy? Just another point of view"), and also in nationalist disputes.
2. A sort of fear among our (mostly white male liberal American) admin corps of getting involved in ethnic feuds, because, as they've learnt since school, you can't touch those, because you always lose. Even the feuds that don't involve your particular ethnic group! It was no coincidence that, back in the day, some of the most pre-eminent sysops involved in handling these problems were myself, Future Perfect, and Dbachmann, all Europeans. As a practical matter, this meant (and still means) that articles like Afrocentrism and Ancient Egyptian race controversy degenerated into unmanageable piles of schlock, proving totally resistant to cleanup, while trainwrecks like Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan occurred with virtually no restraint short of massive arbitration cases, resulting in mass bannings. Even now it will likely prove extremely difficult to deal with this ridiculous List of Indian inventions business, with all the shouts of "colonialism" wafting over ANI.
3. The "wikileaks" attitude of "full disclosure at any cost". This resulted in some highly unpleasant but fully sourced BLPs which proved highly difficult to deal with, to say the least.

The problems we were having in dealing with cyber-warfare were exacerbated by the uneasy relationship between arbcom and the admin corps. In theory the arbitration committee was composed of the best and the brightest of the admin corps. In practice there was an annoying tendency for sysops who had scrupulously avoided any serious controversy (and hence made no enemies) to be the ones elected, which caused considerable resentment and no small share of disasters. In theory the arbcom was the reviewing agency, and check on, the admin corps. In practice the arbcom actually needed a unified and willing admin corps to get their rulings enacted without causing even more strife. The famous "Giano wars" were a perfect example of the results of having an admin corps entirely divided over how best to implement AC rulings, and deal with a particular problem. At one point, in response to division amongst sysops, there seemed to be a particular movement among certain Committee members to, as it were, become both judiciary and police force, which I regarded as especially dangerous role creep. Both myself and SlimVirgin got into extremely hot water for undoing blocks made by Committee members, which, I think, we independently regarded as made outside the Committee's remit, representing a dangerous abrogation of the responsibilities of administrators. That passed, though.

On the flip side of the coin, the relationship has, over a very long time, grown easier after WP:ARBMAC and the institution of discretionary sanctions. If you check out User:Moreschi/The Plague/Useful links, you'll see a gradual growth in the quantity and length of nationalist cases, to the point where the committee was being absolutely swamped in repeated dramas that sysops and arbcom alike seemed powerless to resolve, despite the best efforts of folk such as Dmcdevit and Kirill Lokshin (who gets the credit - in my book anyway - for most of arbcom's best work, both now and then). Discretionary sanctions allowed the admin corps to resolve formerly intractable disputes with subtler tools than just blocks and bans, and it also showed people that the committee trusted them not to fuck up too badly; that the committee was willing to delegate and not instantly demop people for taking on responsibility that had previously belonged to the AC. The Committee retained its role as final decision-maker, and court of appeal, but as more and more admins took on arbcom-esque responsibilities, they found themselves far less willing to put with crap, and as a result the atmosphere surrounding the handling of bad-faith users drastically changed over time. A virtuous cycle fed itself - I can really see this now, coming back from a lengthy wikibreak. It took time, but we've come a long way from where we were. Trust me :)

On the bureaucracy front, though, one good sign is the refusal of arbcom to bind themselves by precedent. This, I think, has allowed cases to dealt with individually, and has stopped particular decisions becoming codified case law, which allows well for flexible site norms. It's in keeping with the realisation that this is ultimately a project to achieve a certain goal, and not an actual society. Thus far, this has prevented a genuine bureaucratic class from springing up, because the rules aren't actually growing much, and haven't for a long time. A certain quantity of genuine encyclopedia-work is still an unwritten requirement, both at WP:RFA and at arbcom elections. When arbcom becomes precedent-bound, however, we might have a real problem.

What hasn't changed much, if at all, is this wretched problem of stacked consensus (aka Socratic democracy). Unless you go way over the cliff of what's acceptable behaviour, you can still pretty much get away with anything short of murder if you get enough energetic filibustering partisans (read: a big gang of meatpuppets) together to take over a particular talkpage. It's basically impossible to deal with short of arbitration - still - particularly if you're lucky enough to have any number of vested contributors helping out. We'll figure it out eventually, I suppose, but a lot of people have a hard time figuring out where we have to stop assuming good faith and start watching out for the tigers. Moreschi (talk) 18:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

The California syndrome

I confess the schism in the admin corps was opaque to me, possibly because I wasn't looking or interested, even had I seen clues of it here and there. In some senses, though, it might be that this was inevitable in the notional standard deviation of any Milgram curve, and by the sounds of it I'm glad some people stood fast against tyranny.

I want to advance a theory here that I hope you may have some further insights on, if it doesn't bore you to tears. The theory is that the residual effects of the California syndrome aren't quite as obvious today in a committed and activist relativism, but nevertheless manifest themselves in a kind of blindness; it is almost an ideological smugness about a notional tolerance, seen as a sign of moral superiority, of even the most absurd points of view, which is really not tolerance so much as an abdication of judgement and surrender to anti-intellectualism. It is most obvious when person A steps in to defend person B, who is clearly ignorant about the topic on which he or she is fulminating, on the basis that ethics, democracy and neutrality demand that rational debate be levelled to allow even idiots to participate. This, in my view, is an anti-intellectual reaction to Enlightenment principles.

It is as you suggest a matter of perspective: I wasn't a witness to the bad days, cutting and running when discussions became too heated because I always thought: 'Fuck this, that's not what I'm here for, and most of you gumbies haven't got a clue what you're on about.' I can see that as a mistake now, and one that means I can't appreciate the improvements you speak about as much as someone who stayed and fought the good fight.

What is still impenetrably mysterious to me, though, is a self-controlling mechanism that can 'promote' plainly crappy articles to GA and eventually FA status so long as all the right formalities have been met. Procedural fairness is an odious, bureaucratic, politically correct methodology for neutralising all vigour, all originality, and for reducing all points of view to a sterility that goes well beyond neutrality, embracing instead an absence of meaning altogether.

There's a series of articles on Soviet history I found particularly annoying in that regard and have stepped away from for the time being because of the aggressive proprietary tendencies of some of the article creators/editors. The outcome, though, is that Wikipedia's coverage of Soviet history seems seriously deficient for such a weighty topic, completeley eschewing the Soviet perspective on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the struggle of ideas that defined it. What we are left with is a bland and obviously Cold War Western perspective on an 'enemy' that doesn't exist any more. This appears to be the case because the editing clique can't lay its hands on, or understand, sources that don't repeat Cold War doctrines to the exclusion of all other analyses. As an aside, I think the point I'm making here is closely allied to your thesis in the Plague essay, which I read today.

A more recent case in point is the Wikipedia atheism article. I have been a long-term observer, but decided only yesterday to get involved by way of my interest in Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism. Completely my point of view, but the language (diction and cadence) of this article makes me want to drink whiskey until I can't see any more how stilted and contrived it reads. The tendentious debates about this topic have completely subverted the purpose of explaining what atheism is with some kind of warped insistence on dragging into the debate every non-religious theory for endless comparison and contrast. This is a plainly absurd totemistic fetish. The article is about atheism, not everything you could throw at it in the hope it sticks.

Perhaps more pertinently, from my small perspective, at least one reference cited doesn't support the conclusions attributed to it in the article. I hope to fix that with a small paragraph citing Sartre, and others about him, to differentiate him from Marx and Freud, and to remove the association with some kind of axiological/constructive idealism.

So, the tortured language, which reflects a contrived, ideological effort to accommodate every fucking point of view in the universe, and the fact that sources haven't been checked, were not held against this article when it was nominated, vetted and 'promoted' as a featured article. To a rational observer this can irresistibly lead to the conclusion that 'featured article' is a category that meets ideological pre-requisites not discernible from any of the verbiage devoted to describing FAs in the Wikipedia documentation. I submit that these ideological prerequisites are the concrete manifestations of the California syndrome subconsciously influencing the actions of editors and admins in overlooking what should be obvious flaws in an encyclopaedic endeavour.

I confess that, as an editor, the existing discussion in the atheism talk page makes me think I should stay well away from a point I think would illustrate the conspicuous failure of intellectual rigour, and the large-scale conceptual myopia in the article and the discussion about it: it is possible to be an atheist and a committed Catholic or Muslim or Jew. I fear illustrating that point (good quality references included) would be just too contentious, because I think I would be accused of implying bad faith by Catholic, Muslim and Jewish atheists, and of displaying bad faith myself by Catholic, Muslim and Jewish editors. But it's a failure for Wikipedia, the article, and the general intellectual climate that prevails here all the same.

The California syndrome is today an ideological blight on Western intellectual debate in many areas, not just Wikipedia, manifested by an obdurately blind, legalistic or doctrinaire, and self-righteous insistence on tolerating and demanding equivalence for viewpoints regardless of rationality, discernibility (in the case of the illiterate or the insane, for example), fractiousness or relevance. The insistence that even a fanatic, an idiot, an ignorant commentator, etc, should be given as much respect and credibility as a rational and insightful commentator is bizarre. I grant you that there are serious boundary issues in who determines whether you're an idiot or a genius, but that's not stopped rational debate from self-excising the chaff from the wheat outside Wikipedia.

Internal to Wikipedia, as you say, the problem of defining what's good faith and what's just predatory manipulation is still extant. I would add to that list, however, the problem of discerning between time-wasters and relevant, if sometimes contrary, contributions. I do not have an answer, so I discuss it from a philosophical perspective rather than making suggestions for conrete action. On that note, this has been a philosophical disquisition in its entirety, not intended as any call to action or expected outcome, but I would, again, appreciate your thoughts if you were inclined to give them, at your own convenience. You have insights not immediately apparent to me that I would consider useful to me personally as well as a Wikipedia editor. I am also firmly of the view that dialogue like this one is almost essential in ensuring pluralism and the attempt at excellence in Wikipedia.

I am encouraged to encounter you in these pages, and I hope you don't intend to leave again soon. Thank you for all the time you spent in formalising your thoughts in your essay, and in your response to my own, admittedly somewhat idiosyncratic views.

Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 02:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Answering points in random order:

1. Quality control processes have been irretrievably broken for years, far worse than RFA or RFAR. The GA process was ludicrously arbitrary from the start and rapidly attracted the worst kind of pedant, blind to important flaws but with an eagle eye for trivial ones. The reputation of that little corner of the bureaucracy was already in the gutter when this happened. Frankly, although that was a particular blatant and shocking occurrence, I doubt it was entirely isolated. FA was slightly better off, traditionally, simply because it attracted a better class of editor, but the lack of serious academic review was fatal. Plus, even if "scratch my back deals" couldn't happen at FA level, big gangs of meatpuppets getting together to stack the review page was a major problem (the Hindutva brigade had quite the reputation for this, back in the day). Even now I strongly suspect the best thing to do about these processes is to ignore them. I don't plan ever to submit another one of my articles for GA or FA review.
2. You are, of course, entirely right about Sartre and atheism; I remember reading Existentialism and Humanism several years ago and his discussion of "abandonment" (as well as anguish and despair) certainly does not support the text which it is being used for. The bit on Socrates is pretty lame as well; "by Zeus" isn't anything more than a common exclamation (the Greek equivalent of "Jeez..."), and you can't use Plato's dialogues - particularly the later ones - as evidence for Socrates's beliefs! A much more telling point is actually from Xenophon - can't quite remember where - who says that Socrates always participated in public and private sacrifices. The whole Socrates bit could likely be cut down to one sentence, and the paragraphs on Epicurus and Lucretius should also be merged (as AFAIK their views on the gods don't differ; NB I've read Lucretius more recently and he definitely thinks there are deities - just entirely remote ones. Not sure how he's made it into an article on atheism).
3. For a good example of where tolerance of both total illiteracy and failure to follow any sort of argument gets you, see [1]. In a logical world, I think we would ban people for that, for failing to come anywhere near the standards of education and rationality expected of an encyclopedist - for being, in effect, sword-skeleton theorists. Of course, nothing of the sort occurred. More than anything else, this is due to a lack of both knowledge, and, almost more importantly, imagination. I have a whole spiel on imagination at the bottom of my wikithoughts page, buried beneath the Nietzsche parodies (no. 55 may also interest you; it is tragically true. Enwiki really can be a poisonous place). But I don't intend to go anywhere for a while - the place really does seem to have picked up its game, and most of all, to be fun again. Let me know what you think - ideas for fixing quality control?

Best, Moreschi (talk) 21:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

WTF. I don't feel so bad now. The link to the arbitration page - three years ago! - is almost like a 'preja' vu. Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 01:28, 1 April 2011 (UTC)